Note on the Author:
Uma Parameswaran is a poet, playwright and
a short story writer. She was born in Madras, in 1938 and grew up in Japalpur,
India. She moved to USA to do MA in American Literature at Indiana University. She
Received Ph.D. in English from Michigan State University in 1972. Then she
worked as a Professor of English at the University of Winnipeg. Now she is a
retired professor living in Canada as an Indo-Canadian diaspora. Green are the
Boulevard Trees (1987), Trishanku (1988) Sons must Die and Other Plays (1998), What
was always Hers (1999), Mangoes on the Maple Tree (2002), A Cycle of the Moon:
A Novel (2010), and C. V. Raman: A
Biography (2011) are some of her famous literary works.
Introduction: “Rootless but Green are the Boulevard Tress” is a three-act play set in Winnipeg in the late seventies. It is about an Indian immigrant, Bhave’s family. When the play opens, the family is found in Fort Richmond. The members of the family suffer because they feel as if they are torn apart. This is due to their metal trauma resulted from the cultural shock that they experience in their host land, Canada. The cultural differences existing in the land make the members of the family alienated from the main Canadian culture. Yet they look ‘green’ but they are rootless in the alien land as said by Sharad, “And if an Ontario poplar can’t grow and survive in Manitoba soil, what chance do we have?”
Discussion: Sharad is the father in the Bhave’s family. He once worked as a scientist in India but migrated to Canada in order to find better future. However, he turned into a real estate agent in Canada. He insists strict adherence to the principles of Indian culture and tries to establish his cultural roots in Canada by making his family to follow the same Indian tradition and culture.
Savitri is the wife of Sharad and the mother of three children namely Jayant, Jyoti and Krish. She is a typical Indian wife and works as a teacher in a school in Canada. She is in diasporic angst and so she strictly adopts the Indian culture at home though she looks Canadian outside of it. For example, after reaching home from work, she wears saree and prefers to make Indian food for the family members. She plays a vital role to preserve the relationship intact with all the members of the family and friends.
The eldest son Jayant, a nineteen-year-old guy is frustrated with his father’s principles. He is unable to come to terms with the current reality partly because of his lack of confidence in himself and lack of courage to face reality. He decides to leave Canada with his friend, Jim in search of a better profession and life outside the nation, but lack the determination to proceed further. He does not like Jim who wants to come with his girlfriend. So, he aborts the trip and becomes dejected.
Jayant’s sister Jyothi is twenty-year-old girl. She is in love with her Canadian boyfriend, Andre. In fact, Jayant and Jyoti keep remembering their life in India when they were little kids before Sharad moved to Canada. They nostalgically talk about the house of their grandmother and the ripe mangoes that they plucked from the neighbouring house. However, in Canada, Jyoti does not prefer to marry Sridhar who shows interest in marrying her. She loves Andre who always wants Jyoti to come for dating with him. The cultural conflicts between them lead to doubts and disappointments. Their cultural background plays a vital role in their perception of life and the mental anguish suffered by Jyothi reveals the difficulties in acclimatizing the foreign culture.
Veejala is Sharad’s sister. She is a frustrated scientist, an assistant professor of astronomy at the university. She does not like the professional competency existing in the university which keeps professor like her as lifeless robots. She painfully recalls to Jyoti how she lost her first daughter in the foetus when it was five-month-old, while in her attempt to produce articles on her research. Yet she does not receive any recognition at the university like the other professors who are Canadians. So, she decides to leave her husband and children and go back to India in her attempt to realise her dream. She thinks that her son Vithal and daughter Priti no longer depend on her. Anant, her husband understands her quest for self-actualisation. Hence, she has taken a decision to go back to India though she is not certain about the consequences and result of her decision. This is a shocking news to Sharad, her brother who finds it difficult to digest this act of his sister. Though Savitri understands and appreciates Veejala Moghe’s individuality, she remains neutral. She neither supports her decision nor oppose it.
Savithri knows that there are so many questions the immigrants have in their life, especially in the new country. They are aware of the truth that there can be no satisfiable answer for all those questions. They try to keep themselves busy in order to avoid the situations that demands such introspection or contemplations. Therefore, she loves her daughter and pities her for her inability to understand the need to hold on the cultural roots which may minimise the mental anguish.
Jayant’s friends Arun, Dilip, Rajan, and Sridhar are the Indian students pursuing higher studies in Canada. They also like other immigrants give an account of their hopes, desires, disappointments, longing for the Indian food and Indian cultural ambience, and also their challenges in Canada and their need to be acknowledged and recognised as ‘equal’ with the other citizens of the nation.
Vithal, son of Anant and Veejala, is an ideal student with active participation in the community activities. He is only twenty-one, but he works for the possibility for better social status and political rights for the immigrants, especially Indian immigrants in Canada. However, the shattered family atmosphere, distorts him from his noble ideal pursuit. His failure in love affair, and his inability to look at changes in a broader perspective show the dilemma in the minds of youth like Vithal. In fact, Vithal like young immigrants are not able to accept and adopt the foreign culture and at the same time they cannot come to terms with the native culture. The cultural dilemma keeps them in a state of a mind where they strongly experience cultural shock and the resultant diasporic angst.
Conclusion: The play ends with the message that those who live in foreign countries can be happy and at peace like the Boulevard Trees which remain green as long as it lives irrespective of the time-span of its life. Similarly in this age of globalisation, establishing cultural roots of one’s native country in the host land may results in mental anguish. Thus, the play brings out the importance of acclimatization of the immigrants in the land of their adoption.
